At VMware’s huge conference, CTO Chris Wolf went in-depth on how small and midsized businesses can use new technologies to get big results.

There are nearly 30 million small and midsized businesses (SMBs) across the U.S., and obviously, not all of them could be present at VMworld this summer. But luckily, one of the most compelling conversations of the event came when Chris Wolf, chief technology officer for VMware, spoke with CDW about technologies that offer plenty of promise for SMBs.

Products and services such as NSX Cloud and Workspace One, Wolf said, can help smaller organizations compete with large enterprises and respond quickly to market demands.

“For the small business, you have to have the appearance of looking like a very large business to compete globally,” Wolf said. “But at the same time, you have to be really agile and lean. You might have to pivot because the market’s going a certain way. We can give you a way to develop applications, to run applications, to maintain full control of your intellectual property, and no matter where the market takes you, it’s going to be very easy for your applications to flow that way too.”

Wolf highlighted several of the capabilities that SMBs might find most useful.

1. Enabling a ‘More with Less’ Mentality

Small businesses “are always challenged to do more with less,” Wolf said. “Cloud VMware on Amazon Web Services lets them just check that infrastructure box, quickly deploy applications and manage those applications.”

VMware simplifies IT beyond infrastructure too. “Ideally, policy, provisioning and the user experience should all be centralized and seamless,” he added. “One of the exciting things about Workspace One is that we can provide a single sign-on experience.”

2. Increasing Confidence

VMware’s rigorous product testing gives SMBs peace of mind when rolling out new tools. “For the smaller business, if they’re running a solution like Cloud Foundation on-premises, we’ve already tested [any patch or update] in multiple hyperscale cloud providers before it’s ever reaching their own data center or infrastructure. I think that should give them a really high amount of assurance as to quality.”

3. Delivering (and Managing) Virtual Desktops

A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) provides flexibility and efficiency that users value highly. But this solution can pose a challenge to implement and maintain for smaller IT shops that may not have experience with VDI. Many SMBs want to get out of the business of provisioning and supporting virtual desktops. “That can be incredibly complex to do on your own,” Wolf said. “If you can take advantage of a larger enterprise’s expertise, and do that at a lower cost, then why not?”

4. Promoting App Intelligence

In the past, businesses had to wait for users to post comments on app stores or to place support calls before they could understand how their mobile apps were being used in the world. No more. “I think [small and midsized businesses] should be incredibly excited about Workspace One Intelligence,” said Wolf. “With Workspace One Intelligence, I can see into the application, all the way down to how the user is interacting with the application on their end. And that allows me to more proactively understand how I can optimize and better evolve my application.”